


Context

by xeurydice



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Attachment Issues, Borderline Personality Disorder, Child Abuse, Everyone Is Doing Their Best, Hurt No Comfort, Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape Friendship, Marauder Bashing, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Severus Snape Needs a Hug, Snape's Worst Memory, Sort Of, Suicide, Trauma, Traumatized Snape, Young Severus Snape, and make him go to therapy, except remus but he's an asshole enabler, except tobias. he is not doing his best, her best is not very good but she's 15 give her some slack, i just want to kiss his littol head and let him live on my couch while he gets his shit together, i just. love him so muc, is this enough tags, lily is doing her best, no one is very good at it, pomfrey needs a raise and a vacation, sev and lily's relationship is mutually dysfunctional, the marauders aren't -bad- or -evil- they're just assholes, this is just tragic and emo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:20:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28241532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xeurydice/pseuds/xeurydice
Summary: All characters belong to JKR, pls don't sue I am very tiredThis is a slightly altered and abridged version of chapter 34 of my main, long, AU/OC work, After the Revival--please check it out if you enjoyed this!This is my HC for what led up to Snape's Worst Memory, since it obviously wasn't just "they were bffs and everything was :) cool, and then he called her a mudblood and everything was :( bad." I also imagine their relationship and his love for her as much more platonic than a lot of people interpret it--I think any romantic/sexual tension was less the result of a genuine crush and more the result of "there is one person on earth who I genuinely trust and care about and who I believe, at least to a degree, cares about me, and I am a straight teenage boy and she is a straight teenage girl, oh my god, hormones."I could honestly write a book about my take on Severus's psychology. (cough borderline personality disorder cough c-ptsd cough also regular ptsd cough borderline fucking personality disorder)
Relationships: Eileen Prince & Severus Snape, James Potter & Lily Evans Potter, Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape, Poppy Pomfrey & Severus Snape, Severus Snape & Tobias Snape, Sirius Black & Remus Lupin & Peter Pettigrew & James Potter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	Context

“Eugh, what happened to you, Snivellus? You look even worse than usual!”

They should have realized that there were more injuries than the bruises on his face and neck. He sat huddled against the window, head down, unwashed hair falling into his face, and he barely acknowledged their presence. For once, there was no fight in him.

“Maybe we should…” began the slightest of the boys standing in the door to the train compartment, but the other three ignored him.

“Sirius asked you a question. You should answer when you’re addressed by your superiors, scum.”

Two of the boys laughed. The fourth bit his lip, looking nervously over his shoulder.

“We’re talking to you.”

The wand suddenly jabbed into his side made him gasp in pain and recoil.

“Leave,” he said, in a toneless voice barely more than a whisper. “Just leave.”

“You’re no fun. Seriously, Snivelly, who kicked your ass? I want to buy him a drink. Or her?”

 _I am so tired,_ he thought. It had been a little less than a week since he’d found his mother on the bathroom floor, vomit on her face and the toilet seat, her skin unnaturally, uncannily cold. Even as he’d tried, with every magic and muggle way he knew, to resuscitate her, he’d known she was dead. _I am so fucking tired._ “Not today. Please.”

The _please_ was what did it. The tallest of his aggressors stepped back, cocking his head in an almost canine way. “Please? Look like he’s finally learnt some manners, doesn’t it, James.”

Choosing between the funeral and making the train to school had been shamefully easy. Home was hell, school was hell, but the latter hell had food and hot water and a mediwitch who used healing spells and potions that his mother denied knowing. The latter hell had things he was good at and places where the demons couldn’t reach. MacNair and Avery’s spat insults were nothing, uncreative and generic—after a certain number of times, the sting of _mudblood_ faded until he hardly registered it as a slur. He hated his father more than they did. The man was dirty for more reasons than being a muggle.

Briefly, the boy considered fighting, but four to one—and despite one’s incompetence and one’s reluctance, it would be four to one by the end—was a difficult fight even at the best of times, and with missing teeth and cracked ribs and a clavicle that he could see through the skin was broken in at least one place, he didn’t stand a chance.

“Just fuck off.”

“Ah, and there the manners go. You know, it’s a pity. Personally, I’m proud to call myself a blood traitor, but… your mother didn’t really have an _ideology_ , did she? Just let anyone get into her—“

He was on his feet and his wand was drawn, and then he was reeling with pain, and then he was on his knees, anger and shame and grief threatening to drown him. Kneeling, he was weak; kneeling, he was showing pain; but Christ on a damn cross, four days since she died and his piss that morning was still tinted pink with blood.

The advantage of his position was that, despite what he would have said, the boys were not all idiots. By the start of their fifth year as classmates, they knew that there wasn’t much that would bring Severus to his knees, and their few seconds’ hesitation gave the small one with the prefect’s badge the courage he needed. “Come on, guys,” he mumbled, looking anywhere but at their opponent. None moved to leave, but none attacked as, eyes tightly shut and teeth bared, he stood shakily and returned to his seat.

“What’s going on? I swear, if you four are—oh, for heaven’s sake.”

“Oh, morning, Evans. We were just checking up on—“

“Checking up on? Get out of here or I’ll call McGonagall.” The redhead’s hands were planted firmly on her hips, and her glare had an effect on the foursome that little else did.

“Alright, alright. See you around.”

She gave a sarcastic, cutesy little wave, ran a hand through her long hair, then turned toward the boy and stifled a scream. Every year, every fucking year, every _day_ in the summer, and she still treated every fight with his father like a Soviet missile launch. “What happened, Sev? If it was the Marauders—“

“It wasn’t. And don’t call them that. Fucking stupid.”

Sliding the door shut behind her, she sat down opposite him, bright green eyes round and bright with concern. “Your father?”

“Doesn’t matter.” His head fell into his hands, calloused palms burning swollen eyelids.

“Doesn’t—of course it—!”

“Please, Lily. Please don’t.”

“You’re really hurt, aren’t you? Should I get—“

“I’ll see Pomfrey when we get to school.”

“How long have you—oh my God, your neck! Did he try to _strangle_ you?”

“Yes, alright? And it wasn’t the first time or the worst, so please, _please_ , just leave it. It doesn’t matter.”

He knew she was positively bursting with ill-disguised pity, and he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. If he met her gaze, he knew he would crack. The one good piece of advice his father had ever given him rang in his ears; _if you show them the knife in your guts, they’ll twist it_. He hadn’t cried for Eileen yet, and he sure as hell wouldn’t embarrass himself like that in front of the only person who’d ever given a damn if he lived or died. Lily was silent, but he heard the rustle of her robes shifting, felt her hand on his knee. “Sev, I’m sorry.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Are you… I mean, aside from that—are you okay? You seem…”

“‘M fine.”

“You don’t sound—“

“Please. _Please_. Merlin, just leave it.” He looked up, forcing a tight-lipped smile that made her already wide eyes widen further, eyebrows contracting in apparent horror. He let his head fall back into his hands. “Tell me ‘bout your summer. Petunia still seeing that… Vernon, or whatever his name is?”

“Yes, and he’s awful. Did you know he wanted to be an accountant as a kid? What kind of child wants to be an _accountant_? I don’t know what she sees in him.”

“Money,” said Severus sagely.

“Probably.I could never. I’d rather marry someone broke, who I loved, than someone rich and _boring_ and _rude_ and…”

Briefly, he registered that her willingness to marry someone broke would have stirred something in him a few months ago. Perhaps even a few weeks ago. He felt nothing for her now, though, except gratitude that as long as she sat across from him Potter and his entourage wouldn’t start a fight, and that she was talking about inane, pointless, middle-class things that distracted him from the memory of stiff limbs and cooling skin.

_“Did you do this, boy? Fuckin’ did you?”_

_“No—no, I swear I just found her like—“_

_“Why can’t you magic her back, then? Why didn’t you do nothing?”_

_“I can’t, it’s too late, I—“_

_“Bullshit!” the man had roared, and moving faster than someone that drunk should have been able to, seized his son by the hair and slammed him so hard into the mirror that it cracked. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You useless—worthless little shite! This is all your fucking fault! She wouldn’t’ve killed herself if you weren’t such a freak! You’re a goddamn—”_

He had struggled, feral, half-blind with blood dripping into his eyes from a cut on his hairline, but he was fifteen and malnourished and his father was forty and huge. For the first time, he had lied outright to Lily. He’d dismissed before, minimized, avoided, but never lied. When Tobias had knelt on his son’s sternum and put his hands around his son's throat and squeezed until his son saw white and the room tilted, it had been the first time since he was a small child that Severus had sincerely feared death at his father's hands. He’d let go, an eon later, perhaps realizing that a suicide was one thing, but a murder-suicide another entirely, but the beating had not ended until the teenager lay in smears of his own blood, drifting in and out of consciousness until he’d gathered the strength to crawl, because he couldn’t quite stand, to the relative safety of his bed, where he finally collapsed.

Tobias had broken his bones before, but never so many, and lying there half in shock, Severus pondered the fact that he had _felt_ his wrist break but _heard_ his collarbone. The police came, and the man said that his son was at work and his wife was a drug addict, and they took the body and probably didn’t even do a fucking autopsy, did they? She was hardly the first housewife in Cokeworth to chase a bottle of valium with a handle of vodka. Hardly even mattered whether she’d intended to die or just…

“—went to Paris for a few days, which was lovely, though a bit boring, but—Sev?”

In that moment he despised her. It was more than the jealousy he’d felt in hot, guilty flashes throughout his time as her friend; it was hatred. How dare she have such a petty, vapid, pointless fucking life when people were killing themselves and beating their kids and spending the grocery money on pills and booze for the dozenth week in a row? How _dare_ she have a _lovely_ time in _Paris_ with her _boring_ sister and her sister’s _boring_ boyfriend and her _boring_ parents who never screamed at each other or smashed things or couldn’t pay for heat _again_ because they got fired _again_ for—how _dare she_!?

“I’m listening. Sorry.”

“If you want to talk…”

“ _Fucking hell_ , Lily, I _said_ I don’t!” He slammed his hand down on the seat next to him, sending a jolt of pain up his arm from his fractured wrist. “I don’t need your pity or your charity or—I’m not some _project_ for you to—Jesus!”

“Excuse me?” That horrible, polite coldness in her voice made him want to hit her, and that made him feel like his father, and that made him want to be like his mother and just _die_.

“I—I’m…”

“I know you’re hurt, but you won’t let me help you, so you hardly get to bite my head off for trying to be friends. I swear, every year you hang out with Mulciber and that lot you get nastier. Do you even still _want_ to be friends?”

He gritted his teeth, biting back the tirade he wanted to unleash on her. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I just… you’re right. Course I still want to be friends, just… Been a long summer, is all.”

“I know, but…” She sighed. “How are your parents?”

Without knowing entirely why, he lied again. “Same as ever.”

“No luck getting your mum to rehab?”

He shook his head. It made him feel like a meat hook had been shoved through his eye and out the nape of his neck.

“Pity. Wish things were better for you.”

“Me too,” he muttered bitterly, hoping she hadn’t noticed how husky his voice had gone, how hard he was swallowing.

“D’you want me to keep talking, or…?”

“If you want.”

“We can just sit, if you’d rather.”

Slowly, so as not to hurt his head, he nodded. She gave his knee another light squeeze and settled back in her seat with a comfortable yawn, gazing out the window. Neither spoke again until they exited the train and Severus recoiled with a sharp intake of breath.

“What?”

“What the fuck are—when have there been—those…” He looked at her calm, confused face, looked at the lack of reactions from those around him, and felt a cold weight sink in his chest. He was losing his mind. “Never… never mind.”

Now her expression was wary, almost frightened. “Are you… seeing something?”

“No. I thought I—no.”

“Did you hit your head?”

“Must be that.” He hesitated, then, cautiously, “I thought… for a second… there was something pulling the carriages. Just a shadow, though. Didn’t mean to startle you. Sorry.”

“Must’ve been one of those trees. Bit spooky in the dark, aren’t they?”

“Aye,” he murmured, watching the things that were not quite horses shift in their neat line. “Spooky.”

Instead of following Lily to the feast when the carriages finally halted, he slunk to the hospital wing. “Fighting again, Snape?” sighed the matron.

“Sorry.” Better to have her think he was as much a delinquent in the muggle world as the wizarding than to have her start putting her nose too far into his family life.

“When was this?”

“Few days ago.” He winced as she ran the diagnostic spells, tutted over his wrist and face. “Should see the other guy.”

“What, is he dead?” She smiled at him, then shook her head. “Unless there’s a troll problem in Yorkshire that I don’t know about, you’re not getting these from fighting.”

“Big bloke. Miner or summat.”

The pity in her eyes made him close his own. “There are resources, you know. I can talk to—“

“Headmaster won’t do anything.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does, though. I’ve seen you in here enough that I know you’re a smart lad. You could accomplish a lot, if you had somewhere safe to go over the holidays. Here, drink this, it’ll grow those teeth back.”

Obediently downing the Skele-gro, he grimaced. “It really doesn’t matter. Don’t have the money for a degree or anything, anyway.”

“What are you planning to do? After school? I’d be shocked if you don’t get all Os on your tests this year.”

“Dunno.”  
“You’ve got potential. Think about it. There are scholarships, you know. Any blood in your urine?”

“Er—yes.”

“How much?”

“Dunno. Not a ton.”

“Any muscle cramps in your back? Spasms?”

“Some.”

“Bruised kidney, I suspect. Drink this.”

“For blood pressure?”

“Very good.” She took the vial back when he drained it, and commented offhandedly, “Horace says you’re very gifted at potions.”

“Really?” He looked up, eyes bright in spite of himself. “What else did he say?”

“That you don’t follow the rules.” She smiled at him.

He returned it, looking almost as though he didn’t know how. There was a beat of silence, then, “If… If I had the money I’d like to be a healer.” Prematurely defensive, he added, “I’m not squeamish, I don’t mind blood. And I know a fair bit about spellwriting, and—“

“I think you could be a great healer.”

His tense, skinny shoulders slumped with relief, then tightened again as she began to apply a salve to the bruises. “You think?”

“I do. Shirt off, let me see your back.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“When you’re a healer, if you have a patient with a bruised kidney, cracked ribs, and a clavicle snapped like a matchstick, would you want to see?”

With a reluctant sigh, he took it off. “Don’t say anything.”

“Oh, Severus.”

He already knew his back looked bad, knew it would be an even worse mess of welts and bruises than it was every first of September, but the way she said his name was the first thing in days that brought tears to his eyes. He felt his lower lip twitch and bit it hard. “It’s fine.”

“What was this? A belt?”

“Switch.”

“Merlin, Severus. This isn’t right.”

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Can you just put some of that anodynon on it so I can go?”

Silently, she began to rub the salve onto his back. The relief was so instantaneous and complete that he actually slumped forward on the bed. Finally, Pomfrey spoke again. “They’re going to scar, you know.”

“I don’t care.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but—“

“You think anyone’s ever going to see them, ‘sides you?”

“Of course I do. You’re only fifteen, there’s plenty of time to find a girlfriend and—“

His laugh came out as a sharp, bitter huff. “Not like any girl would look at me.”

“Just take better care of yourself. Stand up straight, wash your hair more, try to let your guard down. You’re not a bad-looking young man, you just have these walls up. That’s what puts people off, not…”

“Not the _fact_ that I’m a scrawny, greasy, huge-nosed freak that’ll never be more’n a bit of rough to anyone? If I’m lucky enough for that?”

Her hand paused on his back. “Don’t talk about yourself like that.”

“Why not? It’s true.”

“Pardon my French, but your father is a bastard, and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

The faint, tiny smile flickered again. “If it were just him I wouldn’t believe it.”

“Who else?”

“Who d’you think?”

“Those Gryffindor kids?”

“Try the whole house. Most of the Hufflepuffs, since I’m not _nice_ enough for them. Most of the Ravenclaws, since I don’t just walk around with my nose in a book, ignoring real life.And half the Slytherins, since I’m, you know, a _filthy half-breed_.”

The mediwitch had to suppress a laugh. Oh, it wasn’t funny, but his impression of Bellatrix Black was so spot-on. “What about the Evans girl? You two were close.”

He fell silent, lowering his head. Part of him wanted to answer; she’s so much better than me I hate myself when I’m around her. I hate her for being born so lucky. I hate her for having everything come so easy. I want her not just to pity me, I want her to notice me, I want her to admire me. I love her. I hate that I love her. I hate that she’s all I have. I hate that I need her, but oh God, oh Merlin, I need her I need her I need. Instead, he said nothing.

“Put your shirt back on. You can still get some dinner. And Snape?”

He looked up, already dressed and halfway out the door. “What?”

A corner of her lip quirked up in a sad smile. “Watch out for those Yorkshire trolls.”

It couldn’t have been more than a few days later that Lily slammed a book down in front of him, making him jump. “Who did you see die?”

“What?”

“Thestrals. Hagrid said.” It was rare that she knew something about the magical world than he didn’t, and triumph shone on her face. “Remember when you saw something pulling the carriage? They’re called thestrals, and you can only see them if you’ve seen someone die.”

“The hell?” he muttered, and began mindlessly to pick at a small burn on his hand.

“Look, there’s a picture. I’d have been frightened too, if I’d seen them and you couldn’t.” She opened to a dog-eared page—Irma Pince would have killed her—and pointed at an artistic representation of the creatures. “Creepy-looking, aren’t they? But who did you see die?”

He was staring at his hands now, and she would not have known he had spoken had his lips not moved. “My mother.”

“What?”

“My mother.” She gasped, and he narrowed his eyes at his fists. “’S fine.”

“It’s not fine! I had no idea! Sev, I’m so, so sorry. What happened? Never mind. You don’t have to say if you…”

“It wasn’t pretty.”

“Did she… you know…”

The word _overdose_ hung horribly between them in the air, and he wanted to explain that it wasn’t like that, she wasn’t just one of the dozens of junkies sprawled on the Spinner’s End sidewalks, she was his _mother_ , she was _Eileen_. “She killed herself, Lily, alright?”

“So you’re just living with your father now? No wonder you—Sev, you’re fifteen, you can’t—“

“There’s a lot I can do you wouldn’t believe.”

“Don’t snap at me, I’m trying to—“

“I didn’t _snap at you_ , I’m just not—“

“—make you feel—“

“—rich enough to be so—“

“—better!“

“—delicate!“

Had he looked up, he would have seen her glaring at him. “I’m sorry about your mum, but you can’t—“

“Stop telling me I can’t do things just because you couldn’t.”

“You’ve been acting weird since we got here. _I’m_ your friend, not those asshole Death Eater wannabes.”

“ _Those assholes_ actually give a damn about me. Besides, they at least don’t flirt with your precious Gryffindor bastard brigade.”

“I don’t _flirt_ with them!”

“Yeah? Tell Potter that. He doesn’t know, and you’re sure as hell not acting like you have a problem with it.”

“That’s unfair! Just because I don’t—“

“If someone I knew treated you how they treat me, I wouldn’t just _watch,_ is what I’m saying.”

“I’m not going to hex them. And they’re only as bad as they are because of how you react. If you just ignored—“

“What, you want me to just roll over and let them—let them stick the knife in deeper, or—? Give it a nice twist? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not _popular_ and _athletic_ and _pretty_ , I can’t just go crying to Dumbledore. I tried that once, first year. You know what he said? Try to be more friendly, Snape. I’m not fucking—“

“I’m not saying Dumbledore’s perfect, but if you’d stop making up weird curses and—and _attacking_ people—“

“Attacking? _Attacking?_ ” He was on his feet, and they were both shouting now, drawing sideways looks from other students. The librarian was going to show up any moment, but he couldn’t lower his voice. “ _I’m_ attacking _them_? You know what kind of shit they do to me? You know what kind of shit they _threaten_ to do? Every time he sees me Black says he’s going to take me out on the lawn, strip me, and leave me there. You know what they call that if it happens to someone decent-looking? Sexual assault, that’s fucking what, but when it’s _me_ it’s _just a prank, Snivellus, stop being dramatic, it’s_ —“

“I’m not saying what they do is okay! I’m just saying you don’t need to retaliate like—“  
“And if I don’t? What the fuck will happen if I don’t? Maybe when the werewolf kills me someone will take it serio—“

“Jesus Christ, Severus, you’re not still on about your werewolf conspiracy theory! You’re _impossible_ , honestly, why do I bother.” With a sharp breath, she picked up the book and walked away.

They made up, and fought, and made up, and fought again, and until James Potter followed through on Sirius Black’s threat, it seemed like things were going to be alright.


End file.
